110 Strategic Leadership
of self-awareness. Through the meaning of the events that they recount, narratives
display values and commitments that matter decisively to people, often with an
unqualified sense of importance. Objectified external analyses typically lose sight
of the richness and ambiguity of human intention and motivation, and the drama
of personal meaning in both ordinary and extraordinary events. Objectification
cuts the vital nerve of connection to the self ’s or the group’s investment in these
events, their caring about them. Stories, on the other hand, convey the sense of
meaning and of mattering with which persons live their lives. Neil Postman captures
precisely these motifs: “Our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through
the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate
the present, and give direction to our future” (quoted in Connor 2004, 10).
Stories capture and convey the dynamic of values as the internalized norms of
self-enactment. After reminding us that humans are always in the pursuit of what
they take to be good, Charles Taylor notes that as we “determine the direction of
our lives, we must inescapably understand our lives in narrative form, as a ‘quest’ ”
(1989, 51–52).
Narratives as a Distinctive Form of Cognition
Human intelligence grasps the truths of stories, identifies with them, and
remembers them in ways that cannot be matched by abstractions. Ask any teacher
or speaker what people remember in their talks. Stories appear to constitute a
distinctive cognitive form. “This appears to be so pervasively true that many
scholars have suggested that the human mind is first and foremost a vehicle for
storytelling,” claims Dan McAdams (1993, 28). Just as there are structures to
knowledge, so too there are forms and patterns in the search for meaning in our
lives. The noted psychologist Jerome Bruner argues that the mind apprehends the
world by way of two different cognitive forms, each with its own radically different
methods of verification. The “paradigmatic” mode is logical, empirical, and ana-
lytical, while the “narrative mode” is concerned with wants, needs, and goals, “the
vicissitudes of human intention” in time (Bruner, quoted in McAdams 1993, 29).
Stories convey the shared meanings of human striving, the intensity of conflict,
and the unpredictability of experience. In our finitude, nothing is guaranteed, so
we are forever finding and losing our path, often in unexpected ways. Stories are
adequate to this inherent tension and uncertainty of human existence in time
since they illuminate the changing meanings of who we are and what we intend
to become (Ricoeur 1984–1986). As Bruner puts it, “Through narrative we con-
struct, reconstruct and in some ways reinvent yesterday and tomorrow.... Memory
and imagination supply and consume each other’s wares” (2002, 93).
Organizational, Cultural, and Religious Stories
Although works of imaginative literature are significant and powerful forms of
narrative, our attention will be focused on organizational stories. The importance